Sickness, Arabs and the 7 habits
Time for another of my on-again off-again returns from the blogging wilderness, this time inspired by the musings of a certain pint-sized, bespectacled Vietnamese-Australian girl who happens to be wandering around in India right now and producing little nuggets of gold on her Facebook blog.I've been in bed sick for the past week, apparently the most auspicious time to strike me down with an influenza-inspired bout of bronchitis was the day of my 23rd birthday... so after struggling through a few tutorials made even more painful than usual I staggered into bed at 2pm and slept the entire day... and so began 5 days of more or less constant vegetation and feeling like shit.
Punctuated by a few random catch-ups with friends just to get out of the house, my self-imposed isolation ended today when I decided to go to uni, as I was feeling at least a little better, under the pretext of getting some work done but the fresh air, daylight and seeing other humans being my two stronger motivations....
Questions that have been plaguing me:
- Which GQ is the best GQ? I was actually intending to by UK GQ but accidentally picked up the US GQ, I was fairly upset at first because it had advertisements for GAP and a 10-page long feature on Gridiron, two things that I find rather upsetting in general (we later find out that US GQ can be a generally upsetting publication, look at the tagline in that cover on the top)... but after leafing through the UK GQ today I found some of the crap in there even more inane (yes yes read the headlines on the cover on the bottom) Perhaps GQ in general has just gone downhill?
- Why are there so many Khaleejis in Melbourne? I don't know if they have always been here and I've only just noticed because I've come back from the Gulf myself but it really does seem strange. I mean if you are a rich, conservative Gulf Arab and you have more or less everything you want and live in a conservative society that protects your family implicitly and is, quite frankly and objectively, an extremely comfortable place to live... why would you pick up home and move to the unfamiliar West? I mean there are far fewer halal food choices, no call to prayer emanating from 5 different mosques within earshot wherever you stand, no ability to drive up to a store and honk your horn to get groceries and many other inconveniences that come with not living in the Gulf... plus it's cold! But yet, lo and behold... I couldn't believe my ears when I heard a conversation between two middle-aged men in Norsiah's Kitchen today interspersed with ya3nis, methalans and zains (Oh glorious "Zain" how I miss you!)... followed by more Arab sightings, I think I saw a total of 6 Gulf Arabs today!
- What is so unbelievably amazing about Stephen Covey and his 7 habits? I have been reading this book of late, and I know it's not at all my cup of tea but I couldn't resist the premise of getting a bit more effective... considering how freaking ineffective I usually am. And it seems to me that Mr. Covey has made his money by condensing around 5 pages total worth of gems/pearls of wisdom into a 350 page monster of a book.
Basically what he does is expound endlessly upon one of these said pearls for pages and pages when it could really be summed up in a dot point. He then proceeds to back up his expoundings, which by now must be painfully clear even to the most simple of simpletons, with boring formulaic anecdotes that all sound like this: "I once worked with Company XYZ where Person Joe Shmo came up to me and said, Stephen, I have a problem that is very bad that I have tried to solve with an idea (that is obviously stupid) from this handy copy of '80s style management for dummies' and it hasnt worked... can you solve it? And I said, why yes, here is an absolutely unexpected way of looking at the problem, you have to... look at things differently! And then Joe applied my wisdom and everyone lived happily ever after"
... or...
"Once my son decided to a) do something stupid b) not do something smart or c) prance around like a monkey... in response to this I tried a) a bad idea but something most parents would do b) a bad idea that still sounds not-so-bad... or c) any bad idea really... found it didnt work... then when I... looked at things differently and did a) something unbelievably awesome and fairly obvious that ties in perfectly with the topic of the previous 76 pages of drivel... it all worked out! hooray!"
I think that Mr. Covey was obviously trying to squeeze a book out of a few smart ideas he once had and thereby make a truckload of money - job well done there - but also all these anecdotes at the end of which good ol' Steve solved things with his patented tested theories may have a more insidious sub-plot... I suspect Steve is actually trying to build a sly personality cult to last the ages and fashion his 7 Habits as a Mao's Little Red Book of sorts. Why else would he position himself as so infallible as to be able to find a solution to any of life's anecdotal problems? Get ready... Covey and Paolo Coelho will be duking it out in future for overlord of the masses.
Labels: literature, melbourne, people
posted by LX @ 12:37 AM
Comments: 2
